SOME EXCERPTS AND COMMENTS

In her 1989 foreword, Wendy Doniger says:

This is the most reliable and indeed altogether the best book I know on all of the many Indological subjects with which it deals, some of them major topics in Indian religion: the life of the saint Chaitanya, the tradition of the mad Baul singers, the aesthetic theory of rasa, the bhakti tradition of the love of God, the doctrines of Tantrism, the origins of the figure of Radha, and the worship of Krishna. But the elegance and humor are there too, and these are the qualities that make this book the best book I know on spiritual and carnal love (or sacred and profane love) in general, on love in union and love in separation, on the difference between poetic and doctrinal attitudes  to sexual love, and between European and Indian attitudes to sexual love, spiritual love, and the love of God.

Edward Dimock explains:

As Elder Olson says, symbols ‘cause us to entertain ideas remote from, or totally outside of, ordinary experience, by the extension of ideas we already possess.’ The image of human love is, in Olson’s terms, a ‘natural symbol’; for what more apt image could there be in all human experience to express transcendent joy and the silent, unknown place of St. John? Or what more apt image could there be to express the longing of the soul for God than that of the longing of the human lover for the beloved? Or what more apt image to express religious rapture than that of sexual pleasure? (4)

This is the beauty of the symbolism of Radha-Krishna, the Divine Couple, being the highest, purest representation of God-dess. They represent the perfection of erotic love based on classical Indian aesthetics. These aesthetic principles aid the Indian mind’s entrance into Radha-Krishna’s eternal dalliance. However, many of these principles become stumbling blocks for the Western mind. Besides the foreign language, costumes, customs and mannerisms, the acceptance of adulterous love as better than married love is repugnant, even to most modern Indians. It also leads to unwanted social consequences when devotees try to act out this model in their own lives.

The idea of entering into an erotic loving relationship with God-dess is most appealing. The followers of Chaitanya created a compelling mythos in this regard. I humbly rework that mythos so that Radha-Krishna may be seen and accepted as a universal symbol for God-dess in the 21st century.

In Bernard’s image, the soul “desires” to be united with the Christ, and this statement emphasizes that the two are separate. It is this aspect of the image which is most usual to Christian, and I might add to orthodox Vaishnava, poets, although the pain of separation always suggests the joy of union. For love in separation is pure love, spiritual love. How this view came to prevail in Christian poetry is of considerable interest and relevance.

It is De Rougemont’s opinion that, “the condemnation of the flesh, which is now viewed by some as characteristically Christian, is in fact of Manichaean and heretical origin.” (5)

To the orthodox Vaishnavas, as to the troubadours, it is the very longing, the intense desire itself, that is the end; the longing is an act of worship, pleasurable in itself, and giving pleasure to Krishna.…

But the sexual image is double edged. It may also be read as suggesting that the ultimate experience of the divine is not in longing for union, but in union itself, that this ultimate experience is the pleasure, raised to the nth degree, of human sexual union. (14)

This longing for union with God-dess is also common to Christian and Sufi mystics. So long as we are in this world, our primary relationship to God-dess is mostly one of separation based on our existential situation. But, the longing for union is almost as sweet and intense as the union itself, and it is what propels us to that union.

According to some texts, man and woman have in them both the divine Krishna and Radha: a woman is female because she has in her a preponderance of Radha; a man is man because he is mostly Krishna. Love between man and woman thus reduplicates in microcosm the love of Radha and Krishna, a love that had both phases, separation and union. (15)

This makes sense from a number of perspectives–spiritual, psychological, social, familial, personal. When a loving couple unites in love, it manifests the love of God-dess and is a foretaste of spiritual bliss. God-dess is within us and indeed is our very self. When we unite the male and female parts of our psyche, we become whole and holy, another taste of bliss. Granting equal status to men and women as partial manifestations of God-dess could help alleviate gender discrimination and dominance. Seeing everyone as a manifestation of God-dess, whom we are in a loving relationship with, could go a long way toward increasing peace and justice in the world.

Separation of lovers and the longing involved in it are called viraha in both Sahajiya and orthodox traditions, and to both, viraha is the way of salvation. For the more intense is viraha, the greater is prema. (17)

Though Radha was a symbol, the poets found in her a real woman also, and their poetry about her love is warm and personal. On the basis of the simple stories of the Bhagavata, the poets built the story of a complicated affair, with all the jealousies and pain, the pique and joy, the angers and satisfactions of human love. (p 20)

The character of Radha was developed according to the aesthetic principles of medieval drama and poetry. They did an excellent job; however, today it is a bit dated and culturally bound. I hate to say it, but much of it seems overly melodramatic and not the kind of relationship I want to be in with God-dess. Just as Shakespeare wrote wonderful plays, still I often prefer a contemporary movie. I present Radha-Krishna in a contemporary Western manner because this mythos has so much to offer, just as Shakespeare’s plays have been adapted as wonderful contemporary movies to reach today’s audience.

That Chaitanya was a religious leader of no ordinary power is quite clear. The revival he inspired encompassed the greater part of the populations of those areas now known as Bengal (both East Pakistan and West Bengal), Orissa, Assam, and Bihar. But the greatest and most inspiring of leaders is perhaps doomed to failure in a climate hostile or indifferent to his ideas and qualities. The time in which Chaitanya lived was ripe. (26)

Very little can be learned of Chaitanya’s early childhood from the writings of the time; stories about him are so interwoven with those of Krishna’s childhood that it is impossible to separate fact from fancy.… It is claimed by his biographers that he was a brilliant scholar. Whether or not this is pious exaggeration will probably never be known, for he has left us no writings … (30)

He [Chaitanya] died in 1533. The manner of his death is not known. Some say that he was absorbed into the great image of Jagannath, others that he walked into the sea. The least orthodox biography, and probably the most factual one, says that he injured his foot during his frenzied dancing and died from an infection. (31)

The term sahaja literally means ‘easy’ or ‘natural’ and in this meaning the term is applied to a system of worship and belief in which the natural qualities of the senses should be used, not denied or suppressed. (35)

This is what attracts me to the philosophy, these general principles. Universalist Radha-Krishnaism is both easy and natural. Why not model our life here on the eternal life we envision for ourselves, and why not envision an eternal life that can be a model for the life we live here and now. As Joseph Campbell said, eternity is a dimension of here and now. Why not sacramentalize our life here in a holistic, life affirming manner?

Both Tantrics and Sahajiyas believe that man is a microcosm, a miniature universe, both believe in Unity as the guiding principle of this universe, that all duality, even that of the sexes, is falsehood and delusion and that cosmic unity is regained, or represented, by man and woman in sexual union. Both believe in certain types of mental and physical control as the means by which man can know his true nature and relate the human and the divine within himself; both believe that there should be no caste division among worshippers; both are humanistic, and begin with the analysis of the nature of man, and see as the end of man the gaining of the “natural state,” the sahaja, the state of ultimate and blissful unity. (35–36)

Krishna the supreme God of the Vaishnavas is indwelling in man as the divine principle. The nature of Krishna is love and the giving of joy; it is this in man’s nature that is to be realized and experienced. (37)

This reasoning offers a simple and elegant theological rationale. I would reword it as: Radha-Krishna the supreme God-dess indwells in all as the divine principle. The nature of God-dess is love and the giving of joy; it is this in our nature that is to be realized and experienced.

Dimock clearly explains,

the Sahajiyas did not adopt the Vaishnava theology until after it had been developed by the Gosvamins of Vrindavana under the inspiration of Chaitanya. The possibility remains of pre-Chaitanya Sahajiya doctrine influencing both the thought of the Gosvamins and Bengali thought about Chaitanya himself.…

Those who have no particular religious ax to grind can hold to a theory of mutual influence: that some of the ideas and concepts, like that of the dual incarnation of Chaitanya, were probably shaped by the already long-existing Sahajiya and re-adopted by the later Vaishnava-sahajiyas after their implications had been worked out by the orthodox theologians; and that, on the other hand, Vaishnavism lent to the Sahajiya the whole of its theological structure … (38–39)

The works of the great and irreproachable pillars of Vaishnava orthodoxy, the Gosvamins of Vrindavana, are full of allusions to and quotations from the Tantras and Agamas. In short, there is ample evidence of contact between the Tantric and Vaishnava schools before and during the time of Chaitanya. (43)

That Nityananda was an Avadhuta is unquestionable; he is called so in many places throughout the biographical literature. The Avadhutas (the “pure ones”), says Bagchi were a branch growing from the trunk of Mahayana Buddhism, others being the Natha, Sahajiya, and Baul sects. (47)

Whether because he had affiliation with left-hand Tantric or Sahajiya schools or for some other reason, Nityananda was looked upon a little askance by his companions and contemporaries in Chaitanya’s movement. (50)

What is clear is that historical circumstances were right for Chaitanya to have been influenced by the Sahajiya movement, though he himself was not a Sahajiya. Secondly and more important, two of his companions [Nityanand and Ramanand] were Sahajiyas and were in a position to bring together, both socially and doctrinally, the Sahajiya stream with that of Chaitanya’s Vaishnavism. (67)

Dimock quotes S.K. De,

Each of Chaitanya’s associates and devotees appears to have developed a considerable community of disciples of his own, and taught the cult of bhakti according to the light which each had received in his own way from the Master. (71)

In the early days of the movement, there was a diversity of views and styles of devotion among the various groups with no real coordination between them. The Chaitanya Charitamrita is the text that unified the various groups, but not as an organized religion. It is unfortunate that Chaitanyaism was introduced to the West as an organized religion with rigid beliefs and regimented practices which discouraged personal innovation and interpretation. Universalist Radha-Krishnaism offers an alternative which encourages personalization.

Dimock offers many other informative insights, but I will leave it to the reader to pursue in the book itself. Some of his assertions are controversial, and we may never know just what the historical truth is. Meanwhile, Place of the Hidden Moon certainly helps broaden our understanding of Radha-Krishna devotion.

Some time ago, I wrote a blog expressing the need for a scholarly exploration of just who the historical Krishna Chaitanya really was. Recently, a friend commented on it saying, “let’s get the ball rolling.” Having some time available, I make some comments on what we may actually know, especially when such material may provide a new view of Chaitanya rather than the doctrinal one.

My primary source will be: Dimock, Edward C., Jr., Trans. Chaitanya Charitamrita of Krishnadas Kaviraj. Ed. Tony K. Stewart. Cambridge, Harvard Oriental Series, Harvard University, 1999. This is the most authoritative, scholarly English rendition of the Chaitanya Charitamrita available. Edward Dimock spent his life working on it starting in 1955. Tony Stewart began studying the text with Dimock in the 1970s. Both are leading scholars in the field. I provide brief excerpts from their one hundred forty three page introduction along with some brief comments of my own. Click here to order from Amazon.

Dimock writes, “Neither they [his friends, colleagues, and teachers] nor I, in the mid-50’s, had any idea that the Vaishnavas, a small, geographically limited religious group would in two decades spread out through the western world with an extraordinary, and sometimes aggressive missionary zeal. (xvii)”

They see Chaitanya not as the founder of the Bengal Vaishnav movement but its revivalist since he became the leader of an already existing group of devotees. They also say,

Despite protestations from many of his biographers, very little is known about Chaitanya’s early life; incidents are so mingled with stories of the child Krishna as told in the BhP that it is hard to separate fact from fancy.… His biographers are understandably anxious to make him out to be a great philosopher, rhetorician, and poet, but there is no reliable evidence to suggest that he was any of these things, or that he had any significant amount of education in them. (11)

I have to agree with their conclusions.

As has been described elsewhere, certain of his [Rai Ramanand’s] practices as well as his reported conversations would seem to indicate that he was a Sahajiya or Tantric Vaishnava, and his doctrinal position might well have influenced Chaitanya’s own attitudes.… it was Ramanand who revealed Chaitanya’s own Radha–bhav, his personality as Radha, to Chaitanya himself (CC 2.8). He saw Chaitanya as both Radha and Krishna: and from that time Radha manifested herself more and more in Chaitanya’s person, until in the anguish of his pain of separation from Krishna she took him over completely, and he became irrevocably withdrawn from the world of ordinary men–mad, as it seemed to worldly human sight (19).

The historicity of Chaitanya’s conversion of Prakashanand is open to serious question for a number of reasons such–as it not being mentioned by biographers other than Krishnadas and Krishnadas’ animosity toward Prakashanand.

The manner of Chaitanya’s death is a mystery.… Jayananda records the least orthodox, least acceptable, and probably the most accurate, in this case, account: that near the end of the Car Festival Chaitanya injured his left foot while dancing, and after being in great pain for six days, died from an infection of the wound (JCM 9.119–56) (22).

If we cut away like this all the stories of Chaitanya’s life which are told to bolster the idea of Chaitanya’s identity with Krishna, and all the miracles and all the hyperbole, and all the lengthy argument and instruction so lovingly presented by Krishnadas, we are left with really very little to tell us about Chaitanya the man. It is clear that he was an ascetic and withdrawn individual, having at the same time an extraordinary personal magnetism. He was almost certainly, especially in the later stages of his life, mad, whether this be interpreted as the divine madness of the holy fool, the random madness of the irresponsible child, or, as A.C. Sena prefers, epilepsy. And he seems, when lucid, to have been a gentle man, though not above sustained and bitter anger, as when he drove poor Chota Haridas to suicide for a minor offense (CC 3.2.100–170). There was one thing he was not: he was no theologian, and this fact had profound effect on the movement after his death (23).

They call Nityanand “a Tantric avadhut” (13) and later say,

Nityanand … seems to have been deeply concerned with the lower social orders. He himself was a casteless avadhut, and began a popular phase of the movement, perhaps one involved with the Tantric or Sahajiya beliefs, which found itself in opposition to that which Advaitacarya led (24).

Nityanand married Basudha and was given her sister Jahnava as part of the dowry. Basudha was Nityanand’s wife and bore his children. Jahnava was his tantric partner or “shakti” who bore him no children but raised his children after her sister’s early death. After Nityanand’s death, Jahnava inherited his mantle of spiritual leadership and is the founder of my lineage.

Of all the Gosvamins, Raghunath probably knew Chaitanya best. It was from him that Krishnadas knew most of the stories of the life of Chaitanya, as it was from Jiva and Rupa that he learned most about how to interpret them.

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Dimock and Stewart point out that the Chaitanya Charitamrita is “a book not of the acts (charita) but of the nectar of the acts (charitamrita), in which personalities would be out of place (26).”

Krishnadas himself was writing decades after Chaitanya’s death, and in Vrindavan, nearly eight hundred miles from the worlds of Navadvip and Puri, and in this sense developed a perspective that only distance could bring, for the events were to him remote in time and space, however inspired he was.…

This did not matter for his purposes, which were to present the basic ideas of Bengali Vaishnavism in terms of Chaitanya’s life, and not to give a historically accurate account of the life itself. (29)

As has been suggested, in some ways the Bengal branch of the movement was becoming more divergent from the theological “orthodoxy” which the Gosvamins were tying to establish. In the matter of the relation of the gopis to Krishna, for example, the Gosvamins were explaining that they were intrinsic to him, parts of him (svakiya), and that the BhP’s statements that they belonged to others (parakiya) should not be taken literally; the bhaktas of Bengal, on the other hand, were clinging to the notion of the religious importance of the parakiya idea, holding that transgression of social norms is a necessary part of true love. So it is likely that Krishnadas chose to write in Bengali not only to reach non-Sanskrit-reading people, but to reach people who were deviating from the Gosvamins’ doctrine, to bring them back, so to speak, to the fold. The essential thought of the movement had gone from emotionalism and immediacy to rational and dogmatic statements as to the meaning of that; it was necessary to bring that thought back down from the rarified atmosphere of scholasticism to the fertile earth of Bengal (33–34).

Krishnadas was not a historian. He often confuses sequences of events, and as the irreverent A. C. Sena points out, he puts quotations from the Brahma Samhita into the mouth of Ramanand Rai during that worthy’s first meeting with Chaitanya, before the latter had gone on his southern pilgrimage (2.8. sl.29, sl.39). Yet it does not bother Krishnadas to inform us that Chaitanya brought that text back with him from southern India, and that it was not known in the north until he did (2.1.111; 2.9.295–97; 2.11.127–29). There are many examples of this kind of thing, and some of them will be pointed out in the commentary. It is tiresome, and irrelevant, to catalogue all these impossibilities and ahistoricities.… He was writing a hagiography, not a history; it was the meaning of the Chaitanya–lila that was important to him, not the historical facts.… One is never entirely sure, due to Krishnadas’ intention and to lack of gender in the pronoun and suffixal forms of the language, whether Radha is being spoken of, or Chaitanya, or both at the same time. Vrindavan and Puri, Chaitanya and Krishna, Krishna and Radha, gopa, gopi and bhakta are all superimposed upon one anther. People move back and forth between the human and divine, the finite and the infinite, with breathtaking ease, and as this is a characteristic of the faith as a whole, so it is a characteristic of this book, and historical fact loses its significance (35).

“Krishnadas was writing for the people of Bengal, and so emulated the form which would, for this kind of content, have been familiar to them (39).” Authors usually write for the people of their time and place. I certainly do. We need not stick with old, foreign, outmoded expressions of spiritual truth that we cannot relate to. To be a relevant, living way in the West, it must grow, evolve, and adapt, not remain stagnant.

Tony Stewart’s unpublished dissertation “analyses the evolution of the idea of Chaitanya’s divinity from its origins in the earliest text, Murari’s KCC, through the five intermediate biographies to Krishnadas’ CC (78).” Jesus’ divinity in the four gospels evolved in a similar manner. In Mark, the earliest, Jesus is most human and in John, the last, most divine, like the CC.

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There are seven complete biographies extant to the sixteenth century. Each biographer is inescapably bound to his own historical circumstance and, more important here, to his or more probably his guru’s personal devotional perspective.… the CC of Krishnadas … is, both literally and figuratively, the final word in shaping the sacred image of Chaitanya (82).

Krishnadas proposes a final, novel image of Chaitanya as the dual-incarnation of Radha and Krishna, an androgynous divinity that encompassed the full range of devotional possibilities between humans and God. When devotees envisioned him as a model for emulation–that is, as Radha–he served as the subject of devotion; at other times, he was approached as the object of that devotion–Krishna (83).

Srivas Pandit’s sister-in-law, Narayani is the mother of Brindaban Das, author of the popular Chaitanya Bhagavat.

Vrindavan Das’ father is never mentioned, which raises the specter of illegitimacy; and second, Narayani is reputed to have consumed Chaitanya’s leftover food, a privilege associated with intimacy, but also a standard mythic variant for insemination (CBh 2.2.319; 2.10.288–94) (85).

Brindaban Das was a disciple of Nityanand and wrote at his command. Most scholars date Chaitanya Bhagavat at 1548, which

argues heavily for its historical accuracy–or at least a version of events acceptable to the community–for many of Chaitanya’s close companions were still alive and probably had the opportunity to read the text.… Vrindavan Das provides details of the puzzling dissociative states experienced by Chaitanya when he was possessed of the various bhavas of devotion. His descriptions are vivid and passionate, capturing the spectacle of Chaitanya’s profound religious experiences (86).

The Chaitanya Bhagavat is also available in English.

Most early biographies, including Kavikarnapura’s own KCCM, emphasized the regal and resplendent power (aishvarya) of Chaitanya, the incarnation of the sovereign lord Krishna as a major component of his divinity; but the CCN, focusing on his other-worldly ascetic life, promotes his role as purveyor of divine love, the sweeter, gentler side of Krishna–bhakti (madhurya). These two positions, as will be seen in the CC, are a complementary pair of defining features, poles around which Krishna’s personality has been historically articulated, and like Krishna before him, so must Chaitanya be presented (91).

In Kavikarnapur’s hands, Chaitanya is no longer the simple avatara of the early tradition, but an increasingly complex figure whose image serves different theologies that develop within their group during the sixteenth century (92).

The Chaitanya Mangal of Lochan Das … for the first time in the hagiographical tradition … promotes the loving aspect–the essential sweetness or madhurya of Chaitanya–nearly to the exclusion of  his identity as cosmic overlord–the majestic aishvarya (93).

Chaitanya’s divinity found several outlets, a perspective which recognized that both masculine and feminine features were complementary parts of the whole, thus for the first time Chaitanya’s biographical image was very consciously fashioned as alternating or serial androgyny (95).

Krishnadas claims that he follows Svarup’s version of that critical meeting between Chaitanya and Ramanand Rai (2.8.63), the revelation of Chaitanya’s androgynous dual-incarnation. While Krishnadas credits the Gosvamins with all of his explanations for Krishna’s divinity and Radha’s love, he credits Svarupa with every major theological innovation regarding Chaitanya’s divinity and how that relates to Radha and Krishna (97).

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The CC is well-known for its comprehensive summaries of Gosvamin theology … Krishnadas weaves together all of the prevailing theories of Chaitanya’s divinity and then hierarchizes them into an integrated structure that assigns relative values to each and explains how these apparently competing interpretations might be unified. He brings together the popular devotional styles of Bengal and the highly analytic theological reflection of scholars in Puri and Vrindavan to provide a comprehensive theological statement that would eventually serve to unite the different communities of followers. His argument serves as a blueprint and justification for the group we have come to know as the Gaudiya Vaishnava sampradaya. (99–100)

The “internal” cause of the avatara, then, was to taste that intimate sweetness (madhurya) of prema rasa, and in so doing, to propagate a new devotional form, the raga marga, the way of passionate love (1.4.14) (101)

The internal reason for Chaitanya’s appearance is to spread the way of natural devotion because its sweet, passionate nature is all that really satisfies God-dess. This “new devotional form” has yet to catch on in the West because the Saraswati sampradaya which introduced Chaitanyaism to the West repressed it.  Universalist Radha-Krishnaism seeks to remedy that by introducing natural devotion, “the way of passionate love.”

Krishnadas’ book endures as the classic biography of the tradition; and … is arguably the best commentary of this biographical tradition. It has been so effective that there have been few significant new formulations of Chaitanya’s divinity since; but so convincing is this theology that after reading the CC, one is invariably led to ask if this work is about Chaitanya at all, or is it really about Radha and Krishna? (106)

To some extent, this aspect of the belief [the power of the name] has been overemphasized in some modern forms of Vaishnavism, and those forms take on the aspect of mantrayana, the tantric system which believes that all power is vested in the word itself. It is true that in CC 3.7, Chaitanya praises Haridasa for the propagation of the greatness of the name, and for his discipline in repeating the name “three lakhs of times” each day (vv. 35–36). But in that same passage he also praises Sarvabhauma for his great learning … and Ramanand for the depth of his understanding of bhakti (vv. 18–28). It is also true that nama-samkirtana, the singing of the name of Krishna, is given as one of the five most important forms of sadhana bhakti, the prescribed ritual (vaidhi); but equal place with it is given to association with holy men, listening to the reading of the BhP, dwelling at Mathura (Vrindaban), and honoring and serving the image of Krishna (CC 2.22.74–75) (112–13)

Again, Universalist Radha-Krishnaism corrects this imbalance and provides a more natural, intuitive approach to devotion which encourages practitioners to use whatever methods work best for them personally in their unique context.

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It would in fact be possible to characterize the whole system as one which conjoins seeming opposites (a position which one ordinarily thinks of as a characteristic of the tantras, and which in fact allows a Shajiya or tantric interpretation of Vaishnavism).… One has to realize that to Vaishnava thinking there is only a series of continuums, between human and divine, between male and female, religion and esthetics, and between bhakti and samnyasa (119).

One concentrates all one’s activity and power of mind on one or another of the characters of the BhP story, preferably a gopi. And with the constant application of sixty-four types of discipline, … a change takes place in the psychic state. One knows one’s self as that gopi upon whom one has been concentrating; and knowing is becoming (121).

This very concisely presents the means and goal of Universalist Radha-Krishnaism.

J.A. Honeywell in an article called “The Poetic Theory of Vishvanatha,” in the Journal of Esthetics and Art Criticism … writes … Thus the poetic world recommended by Vishvanatha is two steps removed from the natural world of particular objects. First, it is a world in which natural objects are represented in their generality rather than in their particularity; second, and only possible because of the first step, it is a world in which supernatural objects are acceptable as natural objects (123–24).

This helps explain our understanding of Braj, Radha-Krishna’s spiritual realm.

The subject of Vaishnava poetry is reality, and the world of that poetry is real; as Ignatius said, “the composition will be to see with the eyes of imagination the corporeal place where the thing I wish to contemplate is found.” … Beauty is truth; art reflects the divine pattern.… Religious and poetic truth are identical (128).

Commenting on a poem by Govindadas, Stewart and Dimock point out:

Govindadas is also saying that Radha is the material creature, and Krishna the immaterial. The implication is that the immaterial needs the material to contain it and make it real and potent. As Krishna needs Radha, God needs man. It also means that Krishna can be known through the material being, that there is a direct link between the physical world, including the body, to the deity, and that therefore the physical world, including the body, is real (134–35).

Universalist Radha-Krishnaism agrees that God-dess is best realized and served by embracing life fully and seeing God-dess’ presence in all things which spiritualizes them and us. The spiritual world is the model for this world. Our life in this world works best when conformed to the spiritual life in its higher manifestations.

Perhaps these excerpts and comments have raised more questions than they answered, and perhaps that was their intent. I just want to get the ball rolling. I would like to see some creative discussion of this subject here as well as in scholarly circles. Publication of Tony Stewart’s dissertation would certainly be helpful. Meanwhile, I highly recommend this edition of the Chaitanya Charitamrita to all serious students of Chaitanyaism. Click here to order it from Amazon.